NASCAR insiders react to Chase Elliott must-win Martinsville situation after Talladega wreck

Chase Elliott’s championship hopes now rest entirely on Martinsville. After a crash at Talladega ended his day early, the Hendrick Motorsports driver finds himself in a must-win scenario entering the final race before the Championship 4.

Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic discussed Elliott’s outlook on The Teardown. They offered up their perspective on how the No. 9 team arrived at this point, and what it’ll take to keep their title dreams alive.

“Elliott is 62 points out, and to your point about randomness and everything like that, he says they put themselves in that position. They didn’t manage the pit road sequence well enough, they cost themselves some positions, and they ended up getting back in that wreck,” Bianchi explained. “So based off that, it doesn’t feel like it was random. They didn’t feel like they executed well enough on pit road, and because of that, they put themselves in a bad spot.”

Despite the setback, Elliott still has one last opportunity to salvage his playoff run, and Martinsville has been a solid track for the Georgia native over the years. He owns one victory there along with multiple top-five finishes. But with the points gap too wide to overcome on consistency alone, only a win will punch his ticket to Phoenix and keep his championship hopes alive.

“I actually don’t think this is super devastating to Elliott’s playoff hopes in the sense that I feel like they were pretty much going to have to go win Martinsville anyway, unless they won today,” Gluck added. “If you’re not going to win today, based on how the playoffs have been unfolding — look where [William] Byron was going to be. Even if he finished top five, he was still going to be a decent amount of points out.

“… I asked Elliott about Hendrick’s flat track program, because we were talking about the gains they’ve made on the intermediate tracks, even though he didn’t get the finish he wanted last week. He was really pumped up about how well they ran at Vegas and the speed they showed, aside from the result.

“But he said, ‘Listen, I still don’t know about the flat track program, but we have two more report cards coming up the next two weeks. And I keep telling you guys, all you have to do in these playoffs is buy yourself more time to try to hit on something. So we’ll find out if we’ve bought ourselves more time to figure something out since New Hampshire.’

“Certainly, New Hampshire indicated that the best flat track program belongs to Penske. So we’ll see if they can keep that up. But yeah, just a wild sort of sequence there — the playoff picture seems very clear now, but it’s also wide open.”

Alas, Elliott isn’t the only driver facing a must-win situation. Ryan Blaney sits 47 points below the cutline, William Byron is 36 back and reigning Cup champion Joey Logano trails by 38. Blaney has history on his side though. He’s won the last two playoff races at Martinsville, including last year when he entered 38 points out.

After Talladega, Elliott was blunt about the task ahead. He’s calm, cool and collected, but time will tell if he can get the job done: “I’m looking forward to Martinsville,” Elliott proclaimed. “Got one more shot at it.”